To celebrate Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House, we’re sharing stories from our program participants, staff, and volunteers about what makes our House so special.
Here, former chair of our Community Board, Chris Thorne, shares his experience of working with our Executive Director, Jocelyne Hamel.
Listen to Chris’ story here or read below.
I got involved in Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House through Jocelyne. First of all, I was just blown away by her energy and her passion, she’s absolutely fantastic.
Jocelyne is a great thinker. She’s someone who really thinks outside the box and has a real creativity in thinking of different ideas and what would benefit the community as a whole.
She’s a fantastic person in terms of collaborating, she’s got the ability to really bring people together. I found over the years working with her, she works very hard establishing personal connections with people in the community.
Jocelyne very much cares about people; she very much cares about her staff and the community. She was always checking in with the Community Board to see how we were doing.
I would say Jocelyne is an awesome person with networking too. She’s very purposeful and in ensuring that she establishes good relationships with people too.
She’s very well respected in the community. I think if you were to go out there and ask different organizations about Jocelyne, they’d tell you that she’s a fantastic leader, with whom they’d really want to collaborate, and that she’s someone who’d always do the right thing in the community.
She’s worked very hard to really allow our House to have good sustainable growth, but also ensure we continue to do what we do best, through the programs that really help the people here at the House.
So she’s been a great person in terms of making sure that we keep up with the times, but we’re not forgetting the programs and services that really matter to the people that live in the community as well here too.
She’s really propelled a lot of positive change in the House, and a lot of that has obviously not been easy.
By seeing the bigger picture and where our House is going, she’s really kept focus on that, so I do feel that she is a big part where our House has gone.
When you think about it she’s been here a quarter of the history of the House actually, because she’s been here the last 10 years!
I’d say, she’s helped me grow as a leader as well too, and I think that’s a very important piece, to always learn from other people. I’ve definitely learned many things from Jocelyne.
She’s a very strong leader and I would definitely consider her one of the strongest leaders I know out there, period.
Do you have a story about what your Neighbourhood House means to you? Share it on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram using the hashtag #myNHstory!